1.43pm: The Misrata Military council is also saying that Gaddafi has been killed. We cannot confirm this. In an email it said it would give a press conference later to explain how he died after being captured.

1.40pm: The picture purportedly showing Muammar Gaddafi's capture we posted earlier seems to come from a video on a mobile phone. AFP has sent through another frame from the same video.

There are reports that deposed Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi has been either captured or killed.

[Update 8:56 a.m. ET] Mahmoud Shamman, Libya's Information Minister tells CNN that a press conference will be happening soon about the alleged death of Gadhafi. Shamman said Gadhafi is dead. CNN's Dan Rivers spoke to him in Tripoli where crowds are cheering, shooting guns in a celebratory way and honking their horns.

CNN's Ben Wedeman, who covers the region and has covered Libya extensively, said that much caution should be used with these reports because false information has come out previously. It is being reported that Gadhafi was found in a storm drain. "It's a bit of surprise because we knew that he had escaped from Tripoli" with a lot of cash and weapons, Wedeman said. It would seem odd that Gadhafi would end up in a manhole-type of area, Wedeman said live on CNN.

Libya's interim government has sent NATO commanders still pictures and video imagery which "leave no doubt" of Muammar el-Qaddafi's death, a senior Western military official told National Journal.

The official said "other NATO assets" - an allusion to the Western intelligence operatives who have been on the ground in Libya for months aiding the rebels there - were en route to Surt to make final confirmation of the Libyan strongman's death.

President Barack Obama hailed the lifting of the "dark tyranny" over Libya after the new government confirmed Muammar Gaddafi had been killed, issuing a warning to other dictators in the Middle East – and particularly Syria – that they could be next.

Although Obama did not name Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, it was he Obama had in mind when he said the rule of the iron fist in the Middle East is inevitably coming to an end. Those leaders that try to deny the push for democracy will not succeed, he predicted.

Obama was speaking in the White House Rose Garden after footage was shown worldwide of what appeared to be Gaddafi's bloody corpse. "One of the world's longest-serving dictators is no more," the president said.

LONDON (Reuters) – Muammar Gaddafi's apparent death from wounds received during the fall of Sirte means a long and complex trial that could have divided Libya and embarrassed Western governments and oil firms will be avoided.

An examination of several brief video clips that have emerged since Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi and his son Muatassim were killed on Thursday seems to suggest that both men suffered their fatal wounds some time after they were captured. Their dead bodies were later put on display in the city of Misurata.

NATO said Friday it was not aware that Moammar Kadafi was in a convoy targeted by NATO warplanes as it headed out of the former Libyan leader's hometown of Surt. The alliance said in a statement that it dropped bombs on the convoy of Kadafi loyalists because the vehicles were "carrying a substantial amount of weapons and ammunition" which could be used against civilians.

They are fighting over the carcass as vultures. The French Ministry of Defense said they got him with a Rafale fighter jet firing over his convoy. The Pentagon said they got him with a Predator firing a Hellfire missile. After a wounded Colonel Muammar Gaddafi sought refuge in a filthy drain underneath a highway &mdash; an eerie echo of Saddam Hussein's "hole" &mdash; he was found by Transitional National Council (TNC) "rebels". And then duly executed.

Today, Friday October 21st, our beloved Brother Leader and one of the world's greatest freedom fighters, revolutionary pan-Africanist, Muammar Al Qaddafi was martyred in combat by the North Atlantic Tribes, organized under the banner of NATO, bolstered by the Arab sheikhdoms, including Al Jazeera's boss, the Emir of Qatar, the pseudo Islamic House of Saud and the US's own hideous creation, Al Qaeda. These North Atlantic Tribes constitute the same forces that have murdered our leaders, invaded our lands and plundered and ransacked our resources for more than 500 years. Muammar Qaddafi bravely stood against them all, making his last stand today, after a lifetime of struggle, in Sirte.

Engineering Consent For Future Military ActionsQaddafi Is Gone But Other U.S. Foes Remain

Libya--Muammar Qaddafi now joins the ranks of powerful foreign figures who have battled the United States only to come to a bad end. But even with the demise of the Libyan dictator, plus Osama bin Laden, Iraq's Saddam Hussein and Serbia's Slobodan Milosevic, there are still autocrats around the world hostile to the U.S., notably in Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea and Iran.

Russia's NATO envoy has written in his microblog that the Western elation over the death of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi could have sadistic grounds. "The faces of the leaders of ‘world democracies' are so happy, as if they remembered how they hanged stray cats in basements in their childhoods," Russian envoy to NATO and the leader of the Congress of Russian Communities, Dmitry Rogozin, wrote in his twitter status on Friday.

As politicians in Western capitals were taking quiet pleasure in the capture and killing of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi yesterday, opinions elsewhere were divided. In Moscow, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that the Geneva Conventions had been breached with the killing of Colonel Gaddafi.

Robert Fisk: You can't blame Gaddafi for thinking he was one of the good guys

We loved him. We hated him. Then we loved him again. Blair slobbered over him. Then we hated him again. Then La Clinton slobbered over her BlackBerry and we really hated him even more again. Let us all pray that he wasn't murdered. "Died of wounds suffered during capture." What did that mean?

Colonel Gaddafi's favourite son Saif al-Islam has been captured close to Tripoli after suffering critical injuries in a bombing raid, officials claimed today. The eldest son of the dead dictator and heir-apparent escaped the clan's final showdown in Sirte that claimed his father and brother Mutassim yesterday.

There's growing international pressure for an investigation into exactly how Libya's ousted dictator Moammar Gaddafi died. The UN expressed concern over video footage taken following his capture which shows Gaddafi taken alive, before he was killed. Meanwhile, NATO said it's winding down its bombing campaign in the country. London-based journalist and author Afshin Rattansi says that killing Colonel Gaddafi is an international crime.

Rome (ANTARA News/AFP) - Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said Friday that ousted Libyan leader Moamer was loved by his people and that the rebellion that toppled him was not a popular uprising.

"This wasn`t a popular uprising," like in other north African countries "where the wind of freedom begins to blow," he told young supporters of his People of Freedom party gathered in Rome.

"Powerful men decided to give life to a new era by putting out Kadhafi," he said.

"This wasn`t a popular uprising because Kadhafi was loved by his people, as I was able to see when I went to Libya."

Italy is Libya`s former colonial ruler and enjoyed close economic and diplomatic ties with the Kadhafi regime prior to the conflict before joining international efforts against the leader.

He told party supporters that strengthening the country`s position in Libya was "important for oil and gas supplies."

Eni, in which the Italian state holds a third share, was previously the main foreign hydrocarbon producer operating in Libya.

In order to maintain that situation Rome recently signed a deal with the new Libyan authorities.(U.B002)